I started collecting these jokes in 1978 while I was at Carnegie Mellon University. Back then the Internet was called the "ARPANet", advertising was prohibited, cross country high speed lines ran at 56K, and no one had heard of the world wide web.

At first, the Random Joke Server was only available to local users. Demand was high, and it was soon made available over the net using the commonly available finger program.

It's been over two decades since I started. During this time I have continually added to the collection, growing it to be the best and largest collection of its kind.

We've won lot's of awards, and received lots of good press, but the real measure of our success is the tremendous growth in our traffic. Lately we have been telling an average of just over one joke every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This is an advertiser supported site. We don't charge our visitors. We run banner advertisements over the jokes, and the revenue from these banners pay for the equipment and facilites that make this all possible. Please pay attention to the ads, and patronize our sponsors. Our jokes are only available through these pages. We do not make collections of jokes available.

I am indebted to the many people who have submitted jokes over the decades, some of who are listed on our contributors page.

I am always on the lookout for new jokes. If you know a good one please please send it to us. If you spot an error please send e-mail to joke@randomjoke.com.

-Michael E. Fryd